Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Medium

PT122 S3 P4 Q25 Explanation

Maize

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsInferenceScience

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Passage

Every culture that has adopted the cultivation of maize—also known as corn—has been radically changed by it. This crop reshaped the cultures of the Native Americans who first cultivated it, leading to such developments as the adoption of agrarian and in some cases urban lifestyles, and much of the explosion of European much more bountiful than others? Modern biochemistry has revealed the physical mechanism underlying maize’s impressive productivity.

To obtain the hydrogen they use in the production of carbohydrates through photosynthesis, all plants split water into its constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen. They use the resultant hydrogen to form one of the molecules they need for energy, but the oxygen is released into the atmosphere. During photosynthesis, carbon dioxide that atmospheric conditions, oxygen begins to bind competitively to the enzyme, thus interfering with the photosynthetic reaction.

Some plants, however, have evolved a photosynthetic mechanism that prevents oxygen from impairing photosynthesis. These plants separate the places where they split water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen from the places where they build sugars from carbon dioxide. Water molecules are split, as in all plants, in specialized chlorophyll-containing structures in the Such C-4 plants as sugar cane, rice, and maize are among the world’s most productive crops.

What this question is testing

Inference

Your task

Find what must be true based on what the passage or stimulus states.

Common trap

Answers that are plausible or likely but not actually guaranteed by the text.

Winning move

Keep only the choice the statements fully support — eliminate anything that requires an extra assumption.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
25.

The passage contains information sufficient to justify inferring which one of

Answer choices

  1. Wrong Gas-Free Zone17% picked this

    In rice plants, atmospheric gases are prevented from entering the structures in which water is split

    In C-4 plants such as rice, atmospheric gases are prevented from entering the bundle sheath cells. That's why carbon has to transform into a nongas molecule to get in there and mix with rubisco. But we're told at the beginning of the last paragraph that C-4 plants "separate the places where they spit water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen from the places where they build sugars from carbon dioxide. Water molecules are split, as in all plants, in specialized chlorophyll-containing structures in the green leaf cells, but those aren't gas-proof areas. Only the bundle sheath cells where the rubisco is waiting is shielded from atmospheric gases.

  2. Out of Scope4% picked this

    In rice plants, oxygen produced from split water molecules binds to another type of molecule before being

    Out of Scope: binds to other molecule We're never told that, in C-4 plants such as rice, oxygen binds to some other molecule before being released. We're told that in C-4 plants, oxygen is prevented from binding with rubisco.

  3. Out of Scope: various cultures4% picked this

    Rice is an extremely productive crop that nourishes large segments of the world’s population and is cultivated by

    We're told that rice is extremely productive, in the final sentence. We have no idea if it nourishes large segments of the world's population or if it's cultivated by various widely separated cultures.

  4. Correct73% picked this

    In rice plants, rubisco is isolated in the bundle sheath cells that surround the vascular

    Why this is right

    This is telling us something that's true of C-4 plants, of which rice is one example. In the middle of the final paragraph, we're told, The key to the process is that in these [C-4] plants, oxygen and all other atmospheric gases are excluded from the cells containing rubisco. These cells, called the bundle sheath cells, surround the vascular structures of the leaf.

    Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  5. Unsupported Comparison1% picked this

    Although rice is similar to maize in productivity and nutritive value, maize is the more

    Unsupported Comparison: more cultivated Unsupported Comparison: similar nutrition All we know about rice is that it's C-4 and one of the world's most productive crops. We can't say it's similar in nutritive value nor can we say it's more widely cultivated than maize.

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